DURHAM can still scrape into the Royal London Cup quarter-finals, with a possible trip to Yorkshire, despite yesterday’s home tie against Middlesex being washed out after 14 overs.

The winners of one group will be at home to the fourthplaced team in the other in the last eight, so if the standings remain as they are it will be a derby on Yorkshire soil.

That would be a relief to Durham after the horrendous schedule which has taken them up and down the country, culminating in Friday’s victory on a sub-standard pitch in Cardiff.

It has been reported and Durham will have their input into the hearing this week, with a points deduction likely for Glamorgan.

Durham’s run-rate is keeping them ahead of three other teams on five points in their group and tomorrow’s match at home to thirdplaced Nottinghamshire appears to hold the key.

At full-strength the visitors boast as powerful a one-day line-up as any in the country, but they have three players, Alex Hales, James Taylor and Harry Gurney, in the England Lions squad. They finish their programme with games against Sri Lanka and New Zealand at Worcester today and tomorrow.

Durham hope to have Ben Stokes available tomorrow, despite his retention in the England squad for the fifth Test, starting at the Oval on Friday.

Stokes could be recalled to the England team following Chris Woakes’ failure to make a big impression with the ball, but the Durham all-rounder did himself no favours by recording a duck yesterday.

Put in after Mark Stoneman lost the toss for the first time in six games, Durham reached 56 for three in 14 overs, with the captain unbeaten on 46.

Coach Jon Lewis said: “One of Mark’s great strengths is he doesn’t miss out on bad balls. He got a couple of looseners early on and put them away really well.

“I don’t want to say we’ve been unlucky, but we could have won all our games in this competition. We have played good cricket but a couple of poor passages have been costly. Now we just need to beat Nottinghamshire.”

He began by playing out a maiden from Tim Murtagh, then Phil Mustard took a single off the first ball of the second and Stoneman pulled the next three balls for six.

Taking advantage of a short boundary on the Lumley Castle side, he dished out the treatment to Toby Roland-Jones.

When Mustard also tried to get after the same bowler two overs later he edged a drive to second slip, then in the next over Calum MacLeod played round a full-length ball from Murtagh and was lbw.

Stokes pushed at a ball from Roland-Jones which was leaving him and gave Ollie Raynor his second slip catch.

That made it 38 for three, but Stoneman continued to time the ball superbly, driving crisply when Middlesex decided to pitch the ball up after he pulled Murtagh in front of mid-wicket for four.

That was a rare bad ball from Murtagh, who conceded only 13 runs in seven overs, while 20-year-old seamer Harry Podmore also sent down two tidy overs before the rain arrived. Of the six runs he conceded, four resulted from a misfield by Eoin Morgan at mid-off, giving Paul Collingwood four of his seven runs.

*Durham’s left-arm swing bowler Jamie Harrison is to see a specialist about a knee problem after suffering a reaction when he bowled seven overs for the second team last week.

Harrison broke down in the fifth championship match of the season at Taunton in May and his latest setback continues the run of injuries suffered by Durham’s young bowlers.

Usman Arshad is still two weeks away from a comeback because of a foot problem, while Mark Wood played purely as a batsman for the seconds last week but will bowl in this week’s games against Lancashire at Stockton.

Michael Richardson, who has had little cricket recently, will play in the one-day game today and three-day match starting tomorrow.